NEW YORK (Reuters) - Planned Parenthood in Alaska sued the
state health commissioner on Wednesday over new regulations that
prevent state Medicaid from covering elective abortions.

The new regulations, set to go into effect on Sunday,
require abortion doctors who receive Medicaid payments to
certify that a procedure is "medically necessary" to prevent
serious risk to the woman's health, or that the patient is a
victim of rape and incest.

The group, Planned Parenthood of the Great Northwest, is
seeking to have the regulations struck down as an
unconstitutional violation of equal protection, said Planned
Parenthood spokesman Joshua Decker.

The lawsuit also seeks to prevent the state from enforcing
the regulations.

Decker said the regulation will illegally restrict
low-income Alaskans' access to abortion services.

Decker said a 2001 Alaska Supreme Court decision ruled that
the state must fund medically necessary abortions along with
other medically necessary services for low-income residents.

"State Medicaid in Alaska can't single out abortions and
treat them differently from other Medicaid services," Decker
said. "With every other service, Alaska trusts
its medical doctors to adhere to the best interests of their
patients."

A representative for Bill Streur, the Alaska Department of
Health and Human Services Commissioner, did not immediately
return calls for comment.

The representative told the Anchorage Daily News on
Wednesday that Streur would not comment until he had reviewed
the lawsuit with state lawyers.

Under the regulations set to take effect next week,
paperwork requesting Medicaid reimbursement will include two
boxes. Doctors would check the first box if the patient was the
victim of rape or incest, or the second box to certify that the
procedure was "medically necessary" to prevent serious risk to
the woman.

A list of medical conditions - which includes congestive
heart failure, a pregnancy complication called eclampsia, and a
psychiatric disorder - which could put a pregnant woman in
"imminent danger" of damage to a "major bodily function" can be
cited as defining the notion of "medically necessary."

Last summer, at the request of a Democratic state senator
who objected to the regulation - which was then only a proposal
- Alaska's Legislative Affairs Agency issued a legal memo on the
abortion regulation, saying the regulation would "likely be
found unconstitutional," NBC's Anchorage affiliate, KTUU,
reported in August.